


Souldate

by captainodonewithyou



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - TiMER, F/M, Oneshot, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, best friends trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:11:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainodonewithyou/pseuds/captainodonewithyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Your timer stops ticking when you meet your soulmate--except Daisy doesn't have a timer.  Or a friend, much less love.  Enter an odd girl who seems to want to spend time with her and her older brother who, like Daisy, has no ticking timer on his wrist.  Neither Daisy nor Lincoln have soulmates, so obviously they are going to be bitter best friends forever.  Just friends...*really*.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

5/2/96, 1:01 PM

 

They always tease her for not having the ticking ink lined into the skin of her wrist, but she pretends it is just because her skin is thicker than theirs.  “It’s a tragedy, really,” is the story Miss Mary, or Margaret, or Maddie—the one in charge of her home—tells her one day when her skin is a little thinner than usual and she is dragged away from the pointing fingers and giggles and nagging that she can never quite shake.  The girl with the blonde braids and the smirk tugging at her lips deserved Daisy’s fist in her face, and she stands by the action even as she stands in the corner of the social worker’s office, shoulders hunched, making herself small beneath the older woman’s hard gaze.

 

She keeps her bare wrist pressed tight to her side and tries to stare bravely back at the woman.

 

“Some of us lose our Other.  Some of us aren’t made an Other.  It is rare, it is a tragedy—it happens.”

 

She says ‘us’ like she understands, but Daisy’s eyes drift resentfully to the neat steady little numbers all in a row on the woman’s bony wrist.

 

“Did you ever think not everyone even wants an Other?”

 

When she says it she thinks she is being brave, but Miss Mary, or Margaret, or Maddie—tells her she is being petulant.  That she’ll understand when she is older.

 

8/14/04, 4:15 PM

 

She meets him when she is older.

 

She is still in the home but she goes to a school in the city, because the private high school next door grew tired of her disruptions.

 

(“She draws far too much attention.”

 

“The other children can’t focus around her… oddity.”

 

“Can you blame them for being uneasy?”)

 

No one at the Home is paid enough to fight for her so she walks the dark blocks every morning and every night, clutching a sharpened pencil against the straps of her backpack and brandishing her thick skin like a security blanket as men in the shadows jeer after her.

 

“Hey, the Unmarked!”

 

“Why not have a little fun?

 

“Isn’t as if you’ve got anyone else waiting on you.”

 

She has found through trial and error and far too much difficulty clamping down on her tongue that telling herself she can’t hear them is the best way to pass through.

 

She still tenses when she hears footsteps closing in on her.

 

When she whirls to face the pursuer, knuckles white around her pencil, she is shocked to face a girl--tidy and gangly with a smile that is kind but entirely no-nonsense.  She goes to school with her, is new—she sat in the empty space beside her in Chemistry, earlier, tucking her tie neatly into matching sweaters and following even the rule about hair-ties.

 

“I can’t believe you left without me, Mary,” she glowers and Daisy stutters but catches herself at the pointed glimmer in the other girl’s eye.

 

She stands a head taller than her and walks straight and tall and if the men are still calling after her, the safe demeanor the other girl exudes muffles them out.

 

She doesn’t want her to know where she lives, or see her wrist, or stick around long enough to not want to anymore—the little kindness is so warm and it is a comfort foreign to Daisy.

 

(She tells her she is Daisy.  The girl tells her she is Jemma.)

 

(“My brother is Unmarked.  I saw your wrist when you exploded your solution in class and nearly killed us all.  I thought you might like to know, you know—that you aren’t the only one.  I think he might.”)

 

She smiles again, less business and more teeth, when Daisy moves off the sidewalk toward the Home and waves goodbye.

 

“Maybe you’ll meet him at lunch period tomorrow?”

 

8/15/04, 11:42 AM

 

She doesn’t because she is behind the slide on the empty playground, making out with the dark-eyed boy who sits behind her in reading and writes her poems that make her feel like he is a star in her solar system.  He has pretty words and tells her she is Unmarked because she is a wild card with the potential to break anyone’s heart.  He tells her she is breaking his and she believes him.

 

The girl still smiles that no-nonsense smile at her when she comes in flushed and takes her seat beside her in the lab.

 

She walks home with her after school.

 

10/26/04, 3:47 PM

 

It continues that way a while—passed poems scribbled in margins and teeth scraping as he presses her into a hot slide and warmer smiles and slower walks home, until the poems grow fewer and the slide grows cooler and one day, Jemma isn’t waiting for her after school.

 

An equally lanky boy is leaned against their spot on the wall, hair tousled and eyes on the ground.

 

Daisy notices his unmarked wrist first.

 

“Daisy?” He sizes her up as she approaches and he is Jemma’s brother, she can see it in the kindness of his eyes—but the gentle timbre of her voice is not matched in the roughness of his.

 

(It is a question for another time).

 

“Lincoln.”

 

It both doesn’t and does answer his question, and she catches his eyes lingering on her own bare wrist.

 

She feels naked.

 

“My sister—Jemma,” a brief interlude where she can see his internal monologue asking him why he felt the need to make the obvious clarification—“she asked—well, told—me to walk you home.”

 

Why rises sharply to her tongue and she nearly doesn’t catch it.

 

“Alright,” comes out instead.

 

She knows people are watching because they always are, but somehow, the stares feel sharper.  Angrier.  Somehow she feels more wrong.

 

It makes her mad and she thinks it leaks into her already abrasive demeanor as she walks in silence next to the boy with a softer smile and darker eyes than the girl she has grown accustomed to.

 

(That night, she wonders how the clear blue shade could possibly haunt her so stormily).

 

10/27/04, 11:24 AM

 

She tells the boy with dark eyes, the next day, that she loves him, really, but she wants to eat with her friends (the word is so soft and misplaced and full on her tongue)—and they have their first fight.  His words grow thorns but she won’t let him see her bleed.

 

She sits next to Lincoln because she thinks Jemma must have psychic damn tendencies and because something unrelated draws her there—something she can’t put to words—and both siblings look sufficiently shocked to see her.

 

(“See, Lincoln, I told you she wasn’t a vampire.”

 

“It’s going to take her a lot more than sitting at a lunch table to disprove that hypothesis, Jem.”

 

“Do you two make a habit of discussing people while they are sitting next to you, because if so, I have suddenly realized why I was prime friendship real-estate.”)

 

To his credit, Lincoln pretends they said more than two words to each other the night previous.

 

To Daisy’s credit, she plays along wonderfully.

 

She likes that they both have Jemma’s best interest in mind.   Likes that they both know how much getting along means to her and likes that they both care enough that she almost, nearly, feels a part of something.  The feeling is warm.  She takes note of it.

 

She likes how when she assures Jemma her older brother was the most perfect gentleman, everything short of dropping his coat in the puddles, he waits till Jemma is focused on her sandwich to flash her an amused smirk that brightens his dark eyes, if only a shade.

 

She likes that she slips right in between their big words and bantering like she has been there all along.

 

And then she gets too comfortable and the question slips out of her before she can catch it.

 

“We were raised mostly separate.”

 

The air is tense and Daisy holds a straight face but internally is kicking herself again and again, until she bleeds.

 

“Jem and our parents only just… moved over.”

 

She sees him twisting his empty wrist nervously and thinks of her own Home, of the two girls who had graduated just last year with similar conditions to she and Lincoln.

 

She understands.

 

They both are waiting for her at the wall outside school, later.

 

11/23/04, 10:02 PM

 

Daisy sees Jemma’s clock stop ticking before she does.

 

They are at the bookstore because Jemma loves reading and Daisy loves being around Jemma—which is a statement she finds tested when she drags her to the dusty back wall of the stretching shelves to weed around on the shelves labeled “Science.”  She isn’t too shy to tell her as much and Jemma isn’t too shy to tell her to shove it.

 

Jemma is too smart to climb on the goddamn shelf to reach a book bigger than she is, but excitement outweighs reason and moments later she, the shelf, and the boy with unfortunate timing grabbing a copy of a textbook woefully near her ass all come tumbling down.

 

“Oof, bloody—I’m so sorry!”

 

Daisy is laughing because she is really a terrible friend and because the boy has broken Jemma’s fall—and really, it could be the science-lover’s personal heaven, sat on a cute boy’s chest and buried to her hips in books.  She tries to swallow the laughter as she moves forward to offer an assisting hand—and her eyes catch where the numbers on her wrist are no longer ticking.

 

12/3/04, 11:30 AM

 

His name is Leo Fitz and Daisy absolutely despises the fact that no matter how desperately she wants to hate him, she can’t.

 

“It’s Leo.  Er, well, Fitz, actually.  I can’t stand Leo…”

 

He’ll stutter on for hours, watching Jemma like she’s the only thing in the world and more often than not forgetting he even has a sandwich.

 

“Tie.”

 

She raises her eyebrows at Lincoln and smirks.

 

They won’t say they are bitter but there is no denying they are (she knows the twitch of his wrist and the ice in his eyes), and they make an icy game out of the couple’s happiness—smiling and nodding and hissing things to laugh about later back and forth all the while.

 

She draws her smile wider as Jemma recalls something hilarious Fitz said a couple nights back.

 

“Whose?”

 

Lincoln chokes on his chocolate milk and she doesn’t flinch.

 

3/19/05, 5:04 PM

 

She waits hours for her boyfriend to show up beneath the slide after classes as they promised, only to catch a bus crosstown to his house and find he has been kissing another girl all along.

 

She calls Lincoln.

 

Her tummy swirls and her vision blurs but she clenches her jaw and forces the feelings back into the lump plaguing her throat.

 

“I need a ride.  The bus isn’t coming.  I need to get out of here Lincoln, please hurry.”

 

The words keep spilling out when she starts talking and he stays on the phone with her until the shine of the family car blinds her from the end of the road, catching beams of the sunset and throwing them at her.

 

It’s only when the warm light burns against her skin that she realizes just how cold her spot on the curb is.

 

She is all talked out and he drives her back to the Home in silence, not pressing—but she feels his eyes on her all the while nonetheless.

 

It is when she has been pounding on the locked door of the Home for what feels like ten minutes to no avail that the lump is burning in her throat again and she thinks maybe, just maybe, this will be the time her thick skin breaks.

 

Steady hands hold her together.

 

“Daisy, stop.  Just come back with me.  You’re going to hurt yourself.”

 

She doesn’t know when he got out of the car and all of her senses are hotwired, reacting in tune with the heavy pulsing in her throat.  She turns from the door preparing to shove him off of her—preparing to yell and make a scene and force the lump to give way.

 

Her hands make it to his chest but then she is crumbling into him because the pressure has overflown and anything would be better than letting him see the tears.

 

He holds her tight while she sobs into his shirt and her senses hotwire to him, instead.

 

(His parents scream at him when he gets back; she hears the echoes in the walls of the bedroom he has snuck her into.  Jemma is out of town on a field trip Daisy had no inclination to join and the lump is gone but suddenly, she realizes how bad of a plan this really is.

 

Their parents would never approve of her best friends’ choice in companionship.

 

She thumbs self-consciously at the place her timer should be.)

 

“You can stay in Jemma’s room.  I doubt my parents will bother you there.”

 

“Can I stay here? Just a little longer?”

 

He sinks tiredly to the carpet in front of her, and the darkness in his eyes is freshly charged and undistilled when he smiles softly.

 

“As long as you want.”

 

The quiet is nice, but she has never been good at choking back her tongue.

 

“We’re lucky, you know.”

 

An eyebrow shoots up, but he says nothing.

 

“We’re not obligated to anyone.  We don’t have that stupid One and Only that can be destroyed forever.  We’re just… floaters.  We don’t have to worry about breaking hearts, because we aren’t actually obligated to anyone.”

 

(“You aren’t a wild card, Daisy! You aren’t special at all.  You’re just a screw up who is desperate to be something she isn’t, to mean something when you mean nothing at all.”

 

She didn’t know words could be a weapon until he held them to her throat).

 

Lincoln’s eyes are so much softer, and when he smiles again it is crooked and just tense enough for her to notice.

 

“I guess you’re right.  Another pro, if we’re doing this; no ugly matching ties.  Ever.”

 

He actually makes her smile.

 

“Being a bitter asshole is so much more fun with a friend,” she tells him, only half sarcastic, and his expression doesn’t change.

 

8/24/06, 3:00 PM

 

Jemma and Fitz make all the efforts they can to protect her, but Daisy’s first day back at school after Lincoln has graduated is rattling.

 

As a unit, they were unshakeable, and people knew it.

 

People also like to poke things when they think they are vulnerable.

 

In bed that night she holds a phone in one hand and an ink pen in the other.  His number is dialed—he told her to call.

 

He got as far away as he could and god does she wish she could have followed.

 

She puts down the phone, refusing to be the anchor that ties him back—regarding the pen instead.  She uncaps it and brings it steadily to her wrist.

 

“10/26/04, 3:47 PM”

 

They are entirely random numbers but she admires how they look, stark against her pale skin.

 

The phone rings.

 

“How was the first day? Beat anyone up?”

 

She stares at the numbers until they blur.

 

“There’s a new history teacher.  Rumor has it his clock stopped for Dr. May.”

 

Lincoln’s scoff is enough to make her forget they are miles and miles away.

 

“Hasn’t May’s been stopped for years already?”

 

Daisy sighs dramatically.

 

“Unrequited love.  How refreshingly scandalous.”

 

He laughs fully then, and she thumbs at the numbers on her wrist until they are just a line of black.

 

8/23/07, 8:53 PM

 

The apartment they rent together is hardly anything special.  It is just off their University campus--the door sticks and the bathroom tiles are chipped but there are two bedrooms and a semi-functional kitchen and it is away, far away from the memories they’ve both taken great care to leave out of their carefully stacked boxes and bags.

 

It isn’t much, but together they can afford to fund their escape--and that is everything.

 

Lincoln puts on an upbeat Elvis playlist loud enough that Daisy is certain their neighbors will be turning up to complain, but his smile is so bright she can’t bring herself to tease him for it--and the rhythmic strumming proves to be the perfect soundtrack to begin unpacking their belongings into their little space.

 

“The oven door sticks.”

 

“I assure you that is never going to affect me.”

 

She wanders into his bedroom as it is growing dark to check on his progress--he’s got his phone to his ear and she takes the cue to be silent, instead wandering to the desk in the corner where one little framed picture stands among his heaping piles of books bigger than she is.

 

Her and Jemma smile back up at her, hugging each other tight and making the most ridiculous faces they can muster.  It was from her birthday, she recognizes the abnormally bright sweater her friend is wearing.  Before he left for college, she broke into the school library after dark and printed a copy--not because she couldn’t have during the day but because the break in felt more appropriate.  It had been a joke, really, presenting him with a picture of her and a shit-eating smile to boot.

 

(“Isn’t it the best present you’ve ever gotten?”)

 

She didn’t realize he kept it.

 

“I’m going to make mac n cheese.”

 

He is off the phone now, moving up behind her--and at his words she turns excited to face him.

 

“With the little star noodles?”

 

He smirks, but there is affection in the gesture.

 

“I’m offended that you think I’d make anything else.”

 

7/3/13, 11:00 PM

 

Fitz and Jemma get married but the only buzz in the crowded church is regarding the fact that the maid of honor and best man’s wrists were matching, and not in the way that resulted in a pretty chapel wedding.  They tried to convince the bride and groom again and again to pick best-people that would not detract from the attention of the day.

 

Their friends prove more stubborn than they know.

 

When they can’t take the dirty looks anymore she steals a bottle of the first hard liquor she can find and they retreat to the hotel room they are, probably indecently—according to most of both halves of the family, sharing.

 

It has never been like that with them—they’ve been roommates for years now to battle their dually tiny paychecks—but really, they love nothing more than to feed the rumor mill.

 

They heap on the carpet in their fancy clothes and slightly battered egos as she pries the lid off the clear liquor and takes a swig before handing it to him.

 

(She thinks he is further away.  Their knees are nearly brushing).

 

She is already buzzed from entirely too many glasses of champagne and it doesn’t take much to throw her far over the edge.

 

“Fitz’s aunt was a specimen.  She wanted to know what it was like, being a 20-something year old virgin.”  He says it in the way that tells her in no uncertain terms that he is not a 20-something year old virgin, and she doesn’t love how the realization hits her.

 

She swallows it back with a burning chug from the bottle.

 

It’s not as if she is, either.

 

He reaches for the bottle, fingers tangling with hers in the interchange.

 

“What did you tell her?  Something good, I hope?”

 

He smiles, that crooked thing that only makes an appearance at his absolute sloppiest, and she can’t stop the laugh that bubbles up her throat at how pleased he looks at the response he still hasn’t filled her in on.

 

“Honestly, Lincoln, you’re such a damn nerd it probably wasn’t even the lack of a timer that had her questioning whether you’ve been laid.”

 

Her words slur and are probably a little meaner than entirely necessary, but he knows what to expect with her and somehow only smiles wider, rolling his eyes.

 

With no warning he reaches for her bare wrist, cradling it in his palms and brushing a thumb over the spot where her timer should be.  She refrains from drawing back, watching him with slightly concerned intrigue.

 

"How awful it must be for you! In your prime and never with a special lady!”

 

His Scottish accent is lacking, to say the very least, and laughter is bubbling out of her so loudly she is certain a noise complaint is going to come through. She is struggling to contain herself, drunken brain fighting to keep up with the rest of her, and she presses her forehead into his shoulder, hard, as she catches her breath.

 

“You should have picked up some desperate girl tonight and made a huge show of it, just for Auntie Fitz.”

 

“Desperate?  Wow, you know how to make it sting. You and Auntie Fitz would probably get along great.”

 

They’re both folded over each other laughing now, and the liquor is lost somewhere between them but it is really entirely at fault for what comes next.

 

“You know, you technically still could pick up that desperate girl and show her judgy ass just who has game and who doesn’t.”

 

He goes down ahead of her and she loiters at the bar till he approaches, saying something about goddamn Scots in a pleasant tone that they’d perfected in the days where they still regularly made fun of the couple they are celebrating tonight.

 

She makes a point of glowering over his shoulder at the old lady she thinks is probably the one he is referring to.

 

“It awes me that you are so concerned about protecting my honor,” he says in her ear, and she tries to smile sweetly back.

 

“Aww, babe, I’m the only one allowed to make fun of you.”

 

(She thinks she kisses him because she notices for the first time how his arms flex and because she is still imagining him kissing someone else who is only kissing him because there are no ties on his wrist.  She thinks she kisses him because behind all their slurred jokes and loud laughter there was that vein of seriousness that they hated to pop, that unspoken reality that always was hidden beneath.  She thinks he kisses her back for the same reason—frantic and needy as they fumble to shut the door of their room behind them until it is slammed and she is pressed hard somewhere between the solid reminder of where they are and what this wasn’t and him.

 

There is something so comforting about his body against hers.)

 

7/4/13, 8:23 AM

 

She wakes with a pounding head and a racing heart, tangled in sheets and limbs and his gentle breathing and she allows herself to stay in that safe place in his arms until his breaths change and he shifts and they both are clinging to each other and pretending they aren’t.

 

“That probably should never happen again,” she says weakly into his chest.

 

She is holding his wrist and thumbing at the approximate place a date should be.

 

He agrees.

 

7/5/13, 3:01 PM

 

They are both very good at ignoring impertinence.  It is like nothing has happened.

 

3/29/14, 1:32 AM

 

They’ve had fights in the past; when he quit medical school she wouldn’t speak to him for weeks. When she started seeing her high school sweetheart again he made passive aggressive jabs until it ended the same way it did all those years ago.  They’d fought over who left a mess in the bathroom and over whose turn it was to vacuum and over the dog Lincoln brought home that Daisy didn’t want to lose their rent deal over.

 

None of those fights compare to the one that lands Daisy at Jemma and Fitz’s door at 2 in the morning.

 

Fitz answers and fills with concern when he sees her, drawing her in and calling anxiously after Jemma as he settles her on their couch with the fluffiest blanket he can find.

 

Jemma rubs her eyes tiredly as she walks in, but is immediately alert when she sees her friend.

 

“Did something happen to him?”

 

No, she shakes her head.  He is fine.

 

At least, she thought he was.

 

(“What’s this?”

 

He’d won the vacuum battle; she’d found the suspicious flyer on his nightstand.

 

He paled when he saw that it was what she was holding.

 

“Daisy, it isn’t—“

 

“So, here’s the thing, since this blatantly, in bold, tells me exactly what it is, I was asking as a formality and to test your response.  And you just fucking failed.”

 

Unmatched. New technology has arisen and you can be among the very first beta tests that potentially could fix the broken link and surface your missing Timer! Read on for all the information you, as an Unmatched volunteer, will need to successfully and safely undergo this new treatment.

 

“It isn’t what you think,” he repeats, shaking his head slowly, eyes fixed on hers.

 

She doesn’t know what else it can be.

 

“I need to get some air.”

 

“It’s midnight.“

 

She slams the door behind her.)

 

Jemma pretends the news doesn’t shake her but Daisy knows her friend better.

 

“I thought he didn’t think we were broken.”

 

Her voice is small.  Jemma stays with her until she falls asleep.

 

Her eyes stay fixed on the row of numbers on her friend’s wrist.

 

3/29/14, 7:00 AM

 

She remembers the first day she spent away from him and the scribbled timer she had drawn on her arm in high school and wonders when what he thought became so goddamn important to her as she flutters between dream and wake.

 

It takes her a moment to register loud banging on the door, and a moment longer to hear the voices when it stops.

 

“Is she here, Jem? Please, just tell me she’s here.”

 

“She’s here.”

 

“How bad?”

 

Jemma doesn’t answer.

 

“I was never going to go through with it.”

 

His voice is smaller now than before and Daisy squeezes her eyes tight to fight the urge to go to him.

 

“Then why did you keep the flyer?”

 

A pause.

 

His voice lowered further.

 

“I just wish I had an excuse not to pretend anymore.”

 

3/30/14, 10:43 AM

 

She goes home and he tears up the flyer and pledges to take over vacuum duties for the next month.

 

She thinks the deal favors her but she doesn’t argue.

 

5/4/14, 7:03 PM

 

Jemma is pregnant and Lincoln and Daisy spend the night coming up with a whole new set of reasons why Unmatched is the superior state.

 

“If I got pregnant, people might actually respect me more.”

 

“If you got pregnant, Auntie Fitz will call the Pope and have the world made aware that you are Holy and Immaculate.”

 

“I wonder if it’s genetic.”

 

“Immaculate conception?”

 

“Being Unmatched, dumbass.”

 

“Oh.” His eyes fall, humor suddenly lost from his expression.

 

She isn’t sure it should trouble either of them as much as it seems to.

 

2/14/15, 4:00 AM

 

Fitz calls to tell them Jemma is in labor.  Their parents are already at the hospital when they arrive and even though Daisy brushed her hair and changed out of her pajamas, she feels like a mess when his mother eyes her disdainfully.

 

She thinks they like to pretend being Unmatched is a global issue that she is the root of.  She shifts uncomfortably beneath the dual hard gazes of her best friends’ parents as they sit in awkward silence in the waiting room—till Lincoln’s hand drapes almost unconsciously over hers, framing her fingers protectively.

 

She doesn’t pull away.

 

He steals a rose from the hospital garden and presents it to her as they leave that night, neither entirely capable of finding anything negative to share about the tiny pink baby they’ve spent the day holding.

 

She isn’t sure she has ever seen any of her three friends so happy.

 

“It’s Valentine’s day, isn’t it? It would be a tragedy for you to go through Valentine’s day without a single awful flower pun.”

 

Her eyebrows raise.

 

“Shouldn’t you be giving flowers to your girlfriend?”

 

He is ridiculous and she loves how his cheeks go pink every time she refers to the girl he has been seeing.

 

(He was supposed to spend the day with her but Daisy watched him go to a corner and explain the scenario quietly over the phone as soon as the hour was at least semi-humane.  His cheeks had gone pink then, too.)

 

He scratches behind his ear, smirking sideways at her and pretending the pink hue isn’t there.

 

“They are named after you, aren’t they?”

 

“This is a rose, not a daisy.”

 

She bites back the dumbass, and she isn’t entirely sure why.

 

“Fine, give me my rose back,” he chides with faux offense, and she holds it nearer to herself.

 

“No.”

 

He smiles.

 

4/5/16, 11:25 AM

 

“I don’t know why you two don’t just get married.”

 

Jemma’s life is hectic, but there is still a place and time for everything, including chiding Daisy.

 

She snorts.

 

“Me and your brother?”

 

Jemma looks up from the baby formula she is mixing, her brow shooting up.

 

“Yes.  What, is there something wrong with that?”

 

Daisy laughs, glancing around the little apartment that is definitely too small for the young family.

 

“I think your perfect life is getting to you.  He’s dating that nurse.  I am, shockingly, not that nurse.”

 

She mutters something indecipherable, and it is Daisy’s turn to raise a brow.

 

“What was that?”

 

Jemma glowers at her and she knows she won’t be repeating whatever she’s said, twisting the cap on the bottle she has been preparing and shaking it.

 

“Look, married life is not for either of us.  You know that.”

 

Her tongue catches just slightly on ‘either,’ because the softness with which Lincoln held onto his niece that morning in the hospital is still very present in her mind.

 

Her friend actually stops moving, eyes widening dubiously.

 

“Daisy, I love you and my brother dearly, but I need you to listen to me very closely because I am too tired to say this more than once.”

 

“…alright?”

 

“You two are married minus the part of marriage that we simpleton Matched actually consider the good bit of marriage.”

 

“The good bit of marriage also requires mutual attraction,” she grumbles, because it is the first thing that she can think of.  Jemma is shaking the bottle again but shakes her head.

 

“Just because you don’t have a bloody tattoo—you two are hopeless.”

 

She swallows.

 

10/9/16, 6:24 PM

 

Daisy stops by the grocery store on her way home from her job at the local weather station because it is Lincoln’s day off and she hasn’t taken a turn doing the shopping in probably a month—which isn’t her fault.

 

(Maybe only a little).

 

At the vegetables a hand reaches for the same potato she does—a shining ring on her finger but no numbers lining her arm.  She gets to the potato first but as she looks up, the other girl smiles and slips it into Daisy’s still outstretched palm.

 

“I get next dibs,” she says, but her eyes size her up a moment until they alight with recognition.  “Daisy?”

 

She doesn’t recognize the girl and it probably shows in the furrow of her brow, but she nods as she tucks the potato into the bag she has shaken out.

 

The stranger’s smile softens.

 

“I’m Bobbi.  We… we were in the same Home.”

 

There is no easy way to say it, but the girl struggles to find one anyway, friendly smile growing strained as she fails, running her fingers through the curls over her shoulder—diamond on her finger again catching the light.

 

Daisy remembers her hair.

 

“You’re married.”

 

She says it because she can’t think of anything else to say and needs to say something.  Bobbi is taken by surprise a moment, but then glances down in the direction of the hand still tangled in her hair, cheeks going flushed.

 

“Engaged, yeah.”

 

She is perceptive or Daisy isn’t subtle or possibly a bit of both, as she catches her gaze shifting to her blank wrist.  The change in her expression is imperceptible—but there is a realization nonetheless.

 

“You should know, Daisy—“ Bobbi’s own eyes glance at Daisy’s matching blank wrist, and back at her. “His timer.  It stopped for me,” she is sizing her up carefully, genuine care in her expression. “but that wouldn’t have changed how we feel about each other, one way or the other.  Your timer…it doesn’t dictate who you fall in love with.  It just takes note of it happening.  You know that, right?  You know you don’t need it, regardless of what they say?”)

 

She is in the worst sort of mood when she finally shuffles through their fifth level door, groceries hung up her arms until she reaches the counter and deposits them none too gently upon it.

 

“I was getting concerned.  Thought I was gonna have to launch a search party to dig you from the deep scary depths of the grocery store.”

 

His smirk shrinks behind a veil of concern when she glares coolly at him.

 

“I’m not in the mood.”

 

He frowns.

 

“What happened?”

 

She ignores him, rifling through the bags in an absent-minded attempt to begin to put their contents away.  She feels his eyes glued onto her and can practically feel how desperately he wants to press further, to drag out whatever it is she is closing him off from.

 

He helps her unload the bags in silence.

 

“Lincoln?”

 

Hmm?”

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

12/5/16, 9:13 PM

 

It is a rare Friday that they both are off work and home and fed and happy.  They are playing his Pokemon DVD’s because the cable has been out all week and because on Wednesday he suffered through her Big Brother fix--but she has made her discomfort fully known, sprawling out over the whole couch when he refused to budge on his show option.

 

He hadn’t been phased, lifting her feet and settling into the cushions, grinning mischievously at her.

 

(She retaliates by leaving her feet sprawled across his lap).

 

“I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

 

“Wait, what?”

 

It’s the wrong thing to say but nothing floating in the air around them right now is right.

 

“I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

 

The first time he says it his tone is uneasy.  This time, she does not miss the sharp edge and the way the words quiver.

 

She perches up on her elbows to find his eyes already watching her reaction carefully.

 

She didn’t even realize they were that serious.

 

She knows how much he likes her.

 

“Okay.”

 

She isn’t entirely sure what else to say, but the hardening of his expression tells her that it isn’t what he wanted to hear.

 

She can’t find any other words she is capable of dragging all the way to her tongue.

 

She doesn’t want to ruin this.

 

His mouth opens like he is going to say something but he closes it, turning back to the television--and she thinks she is in the clear, when--

 

“I guess hoping you might at least pretend to be happy for me was asking a little much?”

 

The words have an icy bite and she’d usually have to clamp on her tongue and fight back her response, but heavy silence holds her again.

 

She pulls her legs to her chest as she sits up fully, and immediately misses his warmth.

 

He is still staring at her, but his expression isn’t angry--his eyes are wide and watery and his brow furrowed.

 

“I didn’t know you wanted to get married.”

 

It is the wrong words again and somewhere in her she knows it is a lie, but they are all she can draw out and his expression doesn’t change--he just shakes his head once, slowly.

 

“That’s because I knew you didn’t.”

 

It doesn’t make sense.  None of it makes sense.

 

He goes to his room, leaving Pokemon flashing across the screen in front of her.

 

Leaving her.

 

1/12/17, 1:15 PM

 

They are on odd speaking terms.  Polite speaking terms.

 

He tells her she has to meet her, and it isn’t in a commanding tone but Daisy agrees, even if all she remembers of her in the past is her colorful flowered dresses.

 

She never thought of her as permanent.

 

To her credit, Jemma seems just as shocked to hear the news, falling silent over the phone line.

 

“He has always wanted children,” she tries to reason out loud,  “I suppose he does like stability…”

 

Daisy can tell she is convincing herself as much as she is convincing her--not at all.

 

“You’re my best friend and you’re both obviously going to be permanent fixtures in my life.  Please make at least a vague attempt at friendliness.”

 

“I’m always friendly.”

 

They meet at Jemma and Fitz’s new place for reasons undisclosed; a snug little single level on the outskirts of the city.  

 

She wears a flowered dress again and is she is beautiful and warm and reasonable and far more friendly than Daisy could ever begin to be.

 

(“Don’t worry, getting this one back into med school is on the short term goals.”)

 

The ring on her finger is shining and small and blue and Lincoln.

 

The timer on her wrist is ticking.

 

Daisy has learned how to bite her tongue.

 

Still, when his eyes linger on her, something in her wants to be heard.

 

“She is sweet, Lincoln, really.  And you two seem to be very taken by each other.”

 

Jemma is snuggled up tight in Fitz’s arms on the fluffy couch Daisy adores.  It has been hours since she left but their apartment is a good drive without the rush hour factored in, so they have settled in for a while.

 

Lincoln’s cheeks go red at his sister’s words.

 

Daisy feels her eyes on her, but she can’t manage to add anything.  She can’t think of anything negative to say and even if she could she would never want to.  He is too happy.

 

She thinks that his face falls a bit regardless.

 

They are in front of their apartment door when the words finally catch up to her so forcefully she thinks she could cry.  She catches his wrist as he reaches for the handle, and he looks startled down at her.

 

“I’m so glad you have her, Lincoln,” she says after a pregnant breath, fingers tightening subconsciously around his wrist.  “I... “ she draws a smile across her lips and hope it doesn’t come out as tightly-strung as she feels.

 

His eyes are scanning hers closely, too closely.

 

“I’m glad that you are so happy together.”

 

She has to let go of his wrist, has to let him open the door and tear his eyes off of her--and it’s then she realizes why he has always held her so tightly.

 

It’s too late now.

 

2/28/17, 12:32 AM

 

She has never seen him so tightly strung and she has never felt so debilitatingly crumbling.  It was easier, when he was smiling and laughing and blushing because she could tell herself that letting him go is right.  That letting him go is what was best for him.  That someone else is what is best for him.

 

But planning a wedding is hard and planning a wedding without a single stopped timer to show for it is harder, and his hours at work are longer--and when she sees him, he is never smiling.

 

He was supposed to look at listings with her tonight--he’d argued, of course, about her being the one to move.  But no other options were remotely viable and she wasn’t petulant.

 

She just wishes she didn’t feel like he was doing everything in his power to avoid her.

 

(“I have to stay late, Daisy.  I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Boss put me on the extra shift… all those storms have taken out a lot of lines.”

 

“Right.”

 

“I’m sorry.”)

 

(She didn’t have any reason for calling Jemma after she hung up with him, not really--she just needed to hear a voice that didn’t sound like it was miles away from her.

 

Fitz picked up.

 

“She’s at her parents with Maggie.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“I’m on my way.”)

 

He puts on a pot of plain-noodled mac n cheese before he crosses to the living room where she has sunken back into her spot on the couch, staring hard at the wall and telling the burning in her eyes that it is all in her head.

 

“You can say it, you know.  To me.”

 

He picks his words carefully, watching her closely--and all she can do is meet his searching eyes reluctantly.

 

“I’m not sure I follow.”

 

He looks rightfully dubious, shaking his head slowly--and it is all she can do not to break eye contact.

 

“It may be too late to act now, but do you really want to keep making the same mistake?”

 

She feels her expression harden as she bites her tongue instinctively, and the annoyed shift in his eyes tells her he notices.

 

She forces her jaw to unclench.

 

“You can’t tell Jemma because he’s her brother--she knows, mind you, but of course you still can’t muster it--and you obviously can’t tell him, but what the bloody hell is stopping you from telling me, hmm?”

 

He is raising his voice in the most uncharacteristic fashion, working her nerves in every way he knows how, grasping for the response that weighs heavily down on her tongue.

 

She suddenly isn’t interested in mac n cheese, or company, or Fitz at all--rising to her feet and turning towards her room, fighting back the lump that has shoved it’s way into her throat.

 

“What is stopping you from just admitting it to yourself, Daisy?!”

 

His words stop her as efficiently as if he’s reached out and grabbed her, and suddenly the heaviness is all around her--pulsing loudly in her ears in the tempo of her heartbeat and burning in her wrists and she whirls around, vision blurred.

 

“He’s happy, Fitz! He’s marrying her and he is getting the life he wants to have,” she can hardly make out his form two feet in front of her as she brings the back of her hand to scrub angrily at her tear filled eyes, struggling to hear past the frantic beat of her heart.  “It doesn’t matter how much I say it, it won’t change that and I could never want it to.  Never.”

 

Her voice is crackling under pressure and she wants to turn around and lock herself behind her door but she is so heavy and the words are still tumbling out.

 

“I can’t have him.  I love him, alright? That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?  I love him.  I don’t need a goddamn clock to tell me that I love him.”

 

Her final words crumble and break and she is clenching her fists too tightly at her sides, nails biting her palms and words sinking in the room.

 

There is a blurry, slow movement somewhere back behind Fitz.

 

The soft click of the front door being pressed gingerly shut.

 

She finally finds her feet.

 

3/4/17, 10:03 PM

 

He stays late at work and she locks herself in her room as soon as she gets home.  It is inefficient but she doesn’t have to see him.  Doesn’t have to face him.

 

She can pretend that maybe he didn’t hear her words.

 

She has locked herself away with vodka this time, at least, but it sits capped on the floor by her armoire.  It tasted too sweet, too much like a white church wedding and fluffy hotel sheets and disapproving auntie’s and her regret.  

 

It doesn’t taste enough like sharing it him.

 

The floorboard creaks outside her door.

 

“Can I come in?”

 

There is a note of pleading in his voice that makes her ache.

 

“Please, Daisy.  We need to talk.”

 

A pause.

 

“I need to see you.”

 

She isn’t sure why she unlocks the door, but when she lets it fall open, she doesn’t move aside.

 

There are dark circles shadowing his bloodshot eyes and his shoulders are sunken with exhaustion, and she thinks that she hasn’t been imagining the restless creaking of his mattress through the past few nights, after all.

 

She knows she must be imagining the slightest perk in his stance when his eyes find hers.

 

“If you want to talk about…” her voice breaks off, and she can’t find the words to say it.  “I think we had better not ever revisit that again.”

 

She thinks he will fall silent, lower his head, back down--but he doesn’t flinch, expression going somewhat defiant as he shakes his head.

 

“Daisy, the last time I agreed we ‘had better not,’ I regretted it the rest of my life.”

 

He takes her breath, for the briefest moment, but she drags herself back down, rubbing annoyed at her tired eyes, trying to hold on to whatever thread of reality she can find, trying to ignore the heartbreaking edge of hope in his eyes.

 

“This isn’t a drunken one night stand! Lincoln, we missed it.  We missed our shot and it’s too late to go back.”

 

He falls silent a moment, eyes still softly taking her in.  Then;

 

“October 26th.  2004.  Right around 4, probably--I didn’t have a watch, but school let out at 3:30 and you without fail took a remarkably disproportionate time to actually leave the building.”

 

His breath is bated as his gaze holds her, waiting. When she doesn’t immediately respond, he continues, softer.

 

“It’s the--”

 

“Day we met.  I know.”

 

Her response only makes the hope grow a little brighter, brow lining in his concentration on her.

 

“I looked.  To see if your wrist stopped.”

 

She presses her lips together, letting her eyes drift shut as she shakes her head once, slowly, a spurt of breath escaping her nose.

 

She thinks if she opens her eyes and sees the expectancy written into every line of his face, it’ll break her.

 

She opens them anyway.

 

“You’re engaged.”

 

Her voice comes out small and for the briefest moment, his eyes drift ashamedly to the floor.  Her heart thuds.

 

“No.  Lincoln, no.”

 

His distraught appearance suddenly makes sense to her.

 

“I couldn’t go through with it.  I couldn’t,” he peers sheepishly back at her through his lashes. “I’m an ass for calling it off.  I know I am,” his words gain more traction and he runs an anxious hand through his hair “but I’m less of an ass than I’d be if I’d gone through with it knowing full damn well…”

 

She rubs at her eyes again, this time more in disbelief than anything.  Her head is pounding.

 

She has never seen Lincoln knowingly cause a wave in his life.

 

“She was good for you.  You were good together, Lincoln--how could you just throw that away!?”

 

She knows her tone is less than patient, less than kind--and his jaw clenches.

 

“I couldn’t put her through it--put myself through it.  Put you through it.”

 

She is only getting angrier, shaking her head and feeling her brow furrow tensely.

 

“Why do you do this shit, Lincoln? Go halfway and quit? You’re throwing out your chance at the life you really want!”

 

She can see his frustration in the swell of his chest as he scratches once behind his red ears, wide eyes pleading with hers.

 

“Daisy, this is the life I really want!  Whatever the hell this is, with you--is it.”

 

His voice is raised and tense but softens into desperate tones and her heart catches in her chest.

 

“It wasn’t fair for me to stay with her.  I’d never love her like I love you.”

 

She kisses him because she loves him, too.

 

(6/7/21, 9:36 PM

 

There is no timer on the little pink arm attached to the cooing baby with her father’s eyes.

 

He is on a chair pressed close to her bed, hand resting in her lap where tiny fingers have captured the tip of his finger.

 

“I guess it’s genetic after all.”

 

“I can guarantee you she was not immaculately conceived. You were there.”

 

“The timer, dumbass.”

 

He rolls his eyes halfheartedly and she smirks, freeing a hand from their sleeping baby in her arms and reaching out to him--running her fingers along his jaw, knotting them through his hair and urging him closer, pressing a fleeting kiss to his lips before ghosting hers over his ear.

 

“Good.”)


	2. What Came After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place immediately following the second to last scene of the first bit.

3/5/17, 3:31 AM

“I love you.  You know that, right?”

They are in her bed because they didn’t get far—fingers scraping and teeth clashing and bodies pressing closer and closer…he is wrapped around her and she can feel his heartbeat steady against her shoulder blade and though she thinks she  _ could  _ fall asleep for the first time in  _ weeks,  _ she is far too tired of fighting against time.  Of missing moments with him.

It is better to memorize the parts of him she didn’t realize were missing from the little portrait she keeps tucked up in her mind.  She thought she knew everything there was to know about him, thought she better than anyone would know all the details that weave together to make her best friend—her  _ person _ .  The details like how he doesn’t like when his hair gets wet or like how his ears burn red when he is angry or like how his smile is just barely uneven, stronger on the right.

But she didn’t know how hard the muscles lining his stomach feel, traced slowly by a gentle finger.  Or that he prefers the left side of the bed.  She didn’t know that when he isn’t drunk, he tastes like coffee and the mint toothpaste she always forgets to recap on their bathroom sink.

She likes how the new little details add a new depth to him, give her a chance to meet her favorite person all over again.

He has told her he loves her—mingled in soft kisses along her skin and buried into her hair and breathed into her ear and it isn’t too much, isn’t even enough.

“It’s okay if you tell me again,” she responds, smiling into the dark when his arms squeeze lovingly tighter around her middle, tugging her still nearer to him so there isn’t a breath of space between their warm bodies.

His lips brush the back edge of her jaw.

“I love you.”

3/5/17, 8:00 AM

She is babysitting Maggie in the morning and it takes all of her strength to begin to shift from his embrace when her phone starts singing from her bedside table where she had never quite gotten to plugging it in the night before. 

It doesn’t help that when she finally begins to bring herself away from his warmth, pawing at the sheets to reach and silence her phone, his arm tightens in protest around her middle, drawing her back near to him as he nuzzles his lips up against her neck.

“Don’t get up,” he murmurs tiredly to her bare skin, breath tickling.  She settles into the embrace, drawing her arms back in to run her fingers along the taut muscles of his arm, still holding her near to him.

“I  _ have _ to,” she responds, making no move to follow through—especially when he lets out a soft groan of protest that makes her stomach turn. “I have to babysit.”

He lets out another soft breath against her neck that she interprets as a low laugh.

“What genius hired you to watch their kid?”  His tone is still groggy and slurred with sleep, and she rolls her eyes as he presses a barely-there kiss where his lips hover, sending little tingles down her spine.

“Your  _ sister _ , dumbass.”

She shifts away from him again and this time he lets her.  She can feel his eyes following her as she moves, tensing her shoulders against the cold as the sheets drop off of her – and she glances down at him as she sits up, his soft hair a tousled mess against her white pillowcase, gaze soft and entranced. 

He untangles his arm from the sheets, reaching to tuck a stray lock of her own messy hair back gingerly behind her ear—fingers trailing down her arm and curling around her wrist—pressing into her skin in that spot that suddenly doesn’t feel quite so empty.

He doesn’t have to say it.

“I love you, too,” she whispers, lips twitching upwards when his fingers clench momentarily around her wrist.

She likes how it feels to not hold her tongue.

3/5/17, 4:07 PM

“Well then, you’re disconcertingly cheerful, aren’t you?”  Jemma is home from her conference and, Daisy is convinced, onto something the moment she walks through the door.

To be entirely fair, she is vacuuming.  And smiling.  Neither of which are habits she is particularly known for—certainly not of late.

“Which is especially concerning considering my daughter is teething and quite probably the least cheery creature to currently grace the planet.”

Her friend has taken the vacuum from her, assuring her that her home is perfectly tidy—but is still watching her with immense concern and a touch of curiosity as she re-crosses the room towards her.

“Are you  _ alright _ ?”

Her smiles twitches unconsciously wider.

“Fantastic.”

Jemma’s eyes narrow, sizing her up as she comes to a stop in front of her—hand coming to her hip in contemplation.

“You met someone, didn’t you.”

It isn’t a lilted in a question so Daisy doesn’t answer—but her friend rolls her eyes, dropping her arm to her side in what seems to be resign. 

“My brother is coming for supper, so if you two still aren’t on speaking terms, you’d best leave soon.”

Daisy feels herself flush, but Jemma has luckily turned away from her, moving towards the kitchen instead. 

“What are you making?”

The question seems innocent enough and Jemma doesn’t flinch.

“Food.”

It isn’t a  _ good _ idea, not when just thinking about him makes her skin go red and her fingers itch to tangle in his hair. 

“Mm, my favorite.”

That does draw a reaction from her friend, who glances over her shoulder, eyebrow raised.

“You’re staying, then?”

“You’re making  _ food _ .  Of fucking  _ course _ I’m staying.”

3/5/17, 5:12 PM

She isn’t sure if it is a secret so much as they just don’t want anyone knowing.  Their friends still think that he is  _ engaged _ —she can’t imagine what their reactions might be to… whatever  _ they _ are—now. 

She isn’t sure what she expects, really.  He looks shocked to see her hovering behind his sister when she lets him in the door, but recovers himself—not fast enough to elude Jemma’s sharp eye, however. 

“Something in your complex’s water?” Jemma asks pointedly as she brushes past Daisy back into the kitchen, glancing suspiciously between her and Lincoln, who, regardless of whatever attempt he is making against it, looks less tense than he has in the weeks since the engagement.

When his eyes hang again on hers she bites down hard on the smile that tugs at her lips, sure Jemma is still watching.

“Lincoln, will you help Fitz set the table?”

He drags his charged gaze from her and her heart stutters.

3/5/17, 5:35 PM

Dinner is hell. 

Jemma sits on one side of her and Fitz on the other—leaving him across from her.  The air is tense and she picks at the green beans that Jemma has put in front of her, careful to focus on turning her gaze cool whenever it drifts back to him—which is difficult, seeing as she can hardly keep her eyes  _ off  _ of him. 

It doesn’t even look like he’s bothered to brush his hair from the morning.

She thinks of how soft it is, tangled in her fingers—and looks sharply back down at her meal.

“You two need a bloody intervention,” Jemma finally snaps after a particularly cool stare is exchanged—which is unfortunate, as Daisy suddenly isn’t entirely certain what it is she is supposed to be angry at him for anymore.

“Jemma…” Daisy mutters, and feels all eyes turn onto her.

“Don’t  _ Jemma _ me!” she chides, “You are best friends, aren’t you? How are you two still living together like this?”

She motions vaguely between them, frustration etched well-meaningly into her brow.

Daisy raises her eyes to Lincoln, who flashes her a brief, soft smile—before Jemma is turning back to him and he replaces it with the same cool mask she is wearing.

They have to do this right—it’s something that they both understand unconsciously.

It isn’t time, not yet.

They end up on dish duty together, probably completely by Jemma’s design – when Fitz takes out the trash and she disappears into Maggie’s room to put their little girl to bed.

She washes, he dries, and their fingers mingle warm somewhere in-between.  She catches his eyes wavering, from her to the two doors their friends have disappeared behind and then back to her—heavy gaze clinging to hers.  She pulls her hand from his with the dish, setting it blindly, still dripping, somewhere on the counter beside her as she shifts nearer to him, taking her own glance at both doors which seem sufficiently still.

She runs her fingers along his shoulder.

“This is a really bad idea,” he murmurs as she reaches her hand to tangle through the hair at the nape of his neck, urging him nearer.  He slips his free arm round the small of her back anyway, tugging her close to him as he bows his head down to her, eyes brighter than she has seen them in weeks when their foreheads press together.

“Awful,” she agrees, lips curving under his as her heart stutters between them.  His fingers dig tighter against her spine and she’s not sure how she manages to press closer still to him, kissing him harder and finally tangling her fingers through the tousled blonde hair that has been taunting her all night long.

“You need a haircut,” she murmurs distractedly against his hungry lips.

“You like my hair long,” he answers in the same hushed, unfluctuating tone, not pulling away – and she smiles at how well he knows her, arching her hips against him when his teeth scrape her lower lip and make her stomach flop, even though she knows that they don’t have much longer before one of the doors is bound to creak open and steal the moment away.

He is usually the reasonable one, she thinks, but she is the one who reluctantly pulls apart from him, unknotting her fingers from his now thoroughly tangled hair and staring regretfully up into his completely wrecked expression, light eyes clinging to her movements.

“Relax,” she says under her breath as she turns back towards the dishes that lay abandoned in the still-running sink, listening to a door begin to creak and lowering her voice even further, “it’s not like we aren’t going home together.”

She allows herself a fleeting glance up at his wide eyes as she bites back a smirk.

Unfortunately, when she glances over her shoulder at Jemma, it is clear that her seasoned mom-eyes haven’t missed the out-of-place smile ebbing at her lips.  Her friend’s eyes narrow, travelling from her stare to the back of Lincoln’s head.

(He is very pointedly looking away from his sister, suddenly very interested in drying a plate Daisy is fairly certain he has already done twice.)

His hair is stuck up  _ everywhere _ .

Daisy follows his lead and pretends not to feel their friend’s sharp eyes stinging against the back of their necks.

“You need a haircut before your wedding,” Jemma finally tells her brother, and it is lucky for both of them that Fitz bustles loudly back through the door at that exact moment, because Daisy can  _ feel _ Lincoln tense up beside her, and she isn’t entirely certain guilt doesn’t make her twitch either.

She finishes scrubbing a final dish, passing it off to Lincoln and carefully setting her expression as neutral before turning from the sink and crossing back towards the table where Jemma and Fitz have reconvened.  Jemma offers her a slightly hesitant smile as she sits, and she braces herself for whatever uncomfortable question her friend is certainly about to ask.

“Seeing as you are on…” she clears her throat, “ _ polite _ … terms with my brother again,” there is another stretching pause, and Daisy glances up to see Lincoln approaching the table as well. “You know I’ve just been helping on the plans for the wedding, and --” she finally stumbles out all at once, gaze also shifting to Lincoln and god, this wasn’t going anywhere good, “I didn’t know if I should write you in as a guest or not?”

She usually has a lie poised on the tip of her tongue, but when she opens her mouth, nothing comes out.

Luckily, Jemma hurries to fill the silence.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to hurt whatever you two are doing to fix this but it was just, you weren’t talking, and then you were both so angry and then Fitz told me about— I just—“

She sees it as her own fault and it only makes Daisy feel worse.

She looks to Lincoln instead as Jemma keeps going, and finds him already watching her, an uncertain edge to his eyes seeking approval in hers.  She isn’t sure if her nod is as imperceptible as she means it to be but she isn’t sure it quite matters anymore, either – as Lincoln circles round the table and lowers slowly into the seat beside her.

Jemma is still filling the silence and he gently says her name to quiet her.

“There’s been a… little change of plans.”

_ Little _ .

Jemma’s eyes widen, shooting somewhat anxiously between them, and Daisy knows her friend well enough to be sure that she has jumped to some amazingly impossible and terrible conclusion – and she nudges Lincoln with her knee beneath the table, urging him to get on with it and quit torturing his poor sister, however inadvertently.

He lets out a low breath, bracing himself.

“I called off the wedding, Jem.”

It is written into her DNA, Daisy thinks, when Jemma’s eyes inadvertently drift to that empty spot on Lincoln’s wrist.  It isn’t like the response doesn’t make sense.

She feels him tense anyway.

Except then Jemma’s narrowed mom-stare has found her instead, and it is her turn to shift uncomfortably.

“You knew already, didn’t you?” she accuses – part hurt, part suspicious, “Daisy, how did you know if you two aren’t  _ speaking _ .”

“To be entirely fair I never said we weren’t speaking, that was your own personal self-insert,” she mutters – not completely conscious of exactly what she may or may not be admitting to.

She glances sideways at Lincoln, which is a mistake, because he is already watching her – eyes softer than they should be, catching her fully off guard.

Jemma’s mind has transcended completely, however, missing the little details in favor of the more enormous ones – already staring past them as she almost definitely is beginning a brand new list of to-do’s to protect her goddamn dumbass brother.

“Oh, bloody hell – Lincoln, mum and dad booked their flight.  They’re not going to be pleased.”

His parents weren’t going to be pleased whether he married or not, Daisy thinks, but she manages to keep it to herself – thinking of the disdainful stares, the only looks she has ever received from the pair – and imagines the same, but being Lincoln, being their  _ child _ .

His eyes fall a little, despite the fact that she is absolutely certain he knows there was no pleasing them one way or the other.

“I’m used to them not being pleased.  Don’t worry about it Jemma.  Please, don’t worry about any of it.  Contrary to all appearances, I actually can handle some shit.”

Daisy can see the hesitation in Jemma’s eyes, but she nods slowly nonetheless – carefully searching her brother’s expression.

3/5/17, 9:40 PM

They get to the elevator before he drifts closer to her, smiling tiredly and pressing comfortable and warm into the space between them, arms going loosely around her middle as his forehead presses lazily to hers.  He doesn’t kiss her, not at first – his nose brushes alongside hers as they rest easily in the shared space, breathing each other in before he lowers a little further, capturing her lips lazily between his.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell her,” he says, drawing back just barely as the words drop from his lips as if they’ve been stuck there. “I know I should’ve.  I just… wasn’t sure it was the right time.”

She stares into his light eyes, looking down at her with genuine, clear regret – and closes the space between them again before answering, teeth scraping his bottom lip.

“You’re right.  It isn’t the right time.”

She doesn’t reopen her eyes when she whispers the words, not wanting to encourage him to continue the conversation as the elevator beeps up another floor.  It works, because his lips are back on hers again a moment later, hungrier – and when his teeth clash with hers and her hips automatically seek out his she focuses on her hands – grasping his shoulder and his arm where she is clinging to him and giving him a solid shove backwards into the wall of the elevator, the muffled bump of his back against the wall mingling with the beep signifying another level. 

It’s easier to kiss him like this, to trap him between her and the wall and hold him there as she kisses him harder, as he sloppily shifts the angle to delve deeper, taste her more fully.

When the final level beeps and the door slides open she doesn’t want to let go of him, not even to make sure no one is standing there.  He shifts just barely but she holds him tighter, rocking her hips against his and breathing in sharply against him when his cool fingers drift beneath the hem of her shirt just as the doors fall closed and the elevator drones into darkness.

“Daisy,” he hums against her mouth, but she ignores the sentiment. “Daisy… we really,” his fingers dig into her hip. “We can’t do this in here.”

She stares up at him through her lashes, lips tingling at the loss of friction.

“Wanna have a race back to the apartment and then continue this? I will win, by the way.”

“Win the race, or  _ this _ ?” He raises a brow, and she smirks – going up on tiptoe to press another fleeting kiss to his lips.

“Both.”

(He has the key and they hover near each other a moment when he catches up to her.  He catches her wrist, ducks down to kiss her slowly and thoroughly before drawing back and watching her with dancing, light eyes.

“Do you plan on letting us in or should I get comfortable?”

He smiles faintly.

“Why the hell didn’t we figure this out sooner?”)

3/6/17, 5:13 AM

She nearly falls from the bed in her rush to get out of it, feet tangled hopelessly in knotted sheets and his warm, sprawled limbs.  The light streaming in through the window is still dusty and fresh, searing against her as one of her feet manage to find solid ground and she hops to regain full balance as she frees the second foot from the depths of the warm bed.

Lincoln is still dead-asleep, dark circles under his eyes fading against the calmness of his expression – so she can only really half-resent him for not hearing the soft thuds on the door.

She shimmies as she finally reclaims both feet and finds footing on the soft carpet of the bedroom, grabbing the first shirt she can find in the tangled mess of clothes on the ground and pulling it over her head as she makes a beeline for the knocking, pulling the bedroom door shut behind her as an unfamiliar afterthought.

Her center of balance is still just off from her speedy rise to her feet, and she stumbles sideways into the couch on her route to the door, holding the edge a moment to allow her vision to protest blotchily against her a moment before taking the final few steps to the door.

It’s Jemma.

“Daisy! Goodness, were you still asleep?” Her eyes briefly take in Daisy’s tousled form, settling widely on her own with a hint of surprise.

“Yeah,” she mutters, voice gravely as she rubs the last edge of fogginess out of her eyes. “It’s the morning, Jemma. I generally sleep through it  _ whenever I can _ . Why are you here?”

Her friend’s expression goes tense and nervous, gaze shifting anxiously.

“It’s bad. I just… I was trying to do damage control. Last night, after… you know…” her voice trails off into a cringe, and Daisy’s muddled brain begins to sound warning alarms furiously, startling her to a far more awake state.

“What did you do?” She asks, unable to bite back the edge of panic that seeps into her tone, especially as Jemma’s cringe sinks more deeply into her brow.

“I got to thinking that flights are simpler to cancel early, and that generally a cooling off period is best, and…”

Daisy heart thuds.

“Oh my god, Jemma,  _ tell me your parents aren’t coming to my apartment _ .”

Jemma lets out a little noise somewhere between affirmation and a terrified squeak.

“My parents are coming to your apartment,” she confirms.  A pause, as her eyes drift back down to what Daisy’s wearing (or not wearing, really), searching for something to begin to fix. “You need to change.  I’ll wake Lincoln and start on the kitch—“

She begins to brush past her into the apartment, but stops short before taking two concerningly slow steps backwards, back into the doorway, still staring at the crumpled shirt on Daisy.

“I’ll change, chill,” she says under her breath, head pounding frustratedly at the terrible turn that the day has taken.

(This is  _ exactly _ why she sleeps through mornings.  _ Shit _ happens during the morning.)

But Jemma doesn’t move.

“That’s my brother’s shirt,” she says, nodding slowly at the shirt Daisy still hasn’t looked down at.  But now she does, damn quick.

She somehow manages not to cringe.

“It must have ended up in my dresser,” she shrugs stiffly. “Gentle reminder that I was  _ sleeping _ mere moments before my entire day got screwed over. Thanks, by the way.”

Somehow, the redirection doesn’t work.  Jemma’s eyes only narrow further, looking up from the shirt into Daisy’s eyes.

“He was wearing it  _ last night _ , Daisy,” she retaliates stubbornly.

She briefly considers a lie about doing a load of laundry, but her friend’s glare is  _ daring _ her to try it.

Unfortunately, it is at that exact moment the floor creaks behind the door to her bedroom.  Jemma looks up sharply at the noise, and swallows hard as realization sinks into her expression.

“So that’s… why you two are getting on so well,” she says, voice a pitch too high.

Daisy nods once, stiffly, too tired to come up with a lie.

“Um. Yeah. That’d… probably be it.”

Jemma stands there, awkward and stiff as her eyes flit slower around the room – and Daisy thinks she may actually have forgotten why she turned up.

“You were… um. Gonna clean the kitchen,” she offers, smiling in an uncomfortable line. “…I’ll take over the part where… we tell Lincoln.”

He is looking for his shirt when she slips through the door, and grins contentedly over at her as she pulls it shut behind her.

“In over ten years of knowing you, over half of which I have  _ lived _ with you -- I’m pretty sure I have never once seen you up this early,” he teases, eyeing the shirt he is seeking on her and crossing the room in a couple strides. He presses a gentle kiss to her brow, running his fingers through her surely disastrous hair.

“Jemma is here,” she explains slowly, watching his eyes go puzzled and quickly concerned.

“What’s she doing here? Is Maggie alright?”

Daisy hurries to speak again, shaking her head hard once as his fingers glide down her jaw.

“No, no. Nothing like that, everyone is fine…”

(Except  _ them _ .)

She takes in a long breath, thinking of the multitude of ways she is going to make Jemma pay her back for this.

“Your… parents are coming.”

“Shit.”

3/6/17, 9:02 AM

A disdainful “ _ you’re _ still here,” and an upturned nose is the standard greeting Daisy receives from her best friends’ parents, so she isn’t particularly surprised when she answers the door for the second time that day to the nearly comfortingly familiar condescension, noses turned extra high and voices extra enunciated to fully convey their shock that she still hasn’t left the place.

“Might be because I live here,” she mumbles dryly with a cheerful smile, which they conveniently ignore as she pulls the door open the rest of the way to their sharp eyes.  If a single speck of dust is out of place they  _ will _ notice, and they will not forget for the rest of their stay. Or the next stay. Or the next.

“Do you suppose they got the humidifier you suggested, love? The air still feels…” Lincoln’s father lets his voice trail as the two pass Daisy, and she relieves an ounce of the already boiling anger within her by soundlessly mocking the words at his turned back.

The  _ air _ . The fucking  _ air _ isn’t to their liking.

“Is Lincoln here?” His mother asks after a glance over the room seems to come up Lincoln-less.  She doesn’t even look at Daisy when she speaks to her.

“No,” Daisy says through the same fake cheery smile as earlier. “He heard you were coming and jumped off the nearest bridge.”

“That’s nice, love.”

She stares at the nearest wall with clenched teeth for a long moment before turning back to the couple, who have found themselves hesitant seats on the definitely unsatisfactory couch.  She would like nothing more than to tell them in detail exactly what she did to their son the night prior where they are sitting, but she contents herself with imagining the way their faces would contort in horror instead.

A moment (that feels like much, much longer) passes before the bathroom door opens and Lincoln slips out, fresh smell of (definitely her) shampoo following in his wake as he takes the open seat next to her.

(A part of her tells her she should find the lack of affection, lack of any real greeting really – shared with his parents odd. But she knows the family too well, knows what to expect so clearly it barely even registers anymore.)

“Hi,” he greets stiffly, shoulders squared tensely as their eyes sweep over him more thoroughly than they did the room – not bothering to return his greeting.

Daisy wants to slip away, normally would have by now – but something keeps her glued to her seat, eyeing the sharp couple who behave nothing like their children look over Lincoln with barely-masked disappointment.

“Was it not trouble enough for you to not have a timer?” His father finally asks after a long, tense moment that his words only string tighter and ignoring Daisy’s presence – as he is so talented at doing. She almost wishes she had his level of ignorance, so she might’ve missed the way Lincoln’s shoulders sag.

“I didn’t intend to cause trouble when I got engaged,” he says in the way she is too familiar with – presented as diplomatic but shaded with a resignation she hates. “But I fully believe I am preventing realer trouble by calling off the wedding.”

One of his mother’s eyebrows shoot up.

“By making a show of your… condition, only to back off of the whole reason it had to be made a show of? That seems like quite a bit of trouble to me.”

“Wow.” Daisy mutters under her breath alongside a dry laugh, shifting in her seat as she crosses her arms – wrist pointedly out – and Lincoln shoots her a warning look.  He doesn’t like her to put herself in the crossfire, doesn’t like her to feed the discourse between him and his parents which is always raging regardless.

Unsurprisingly, they pretend she hasn’t spoken, continuing to stare past her at their son with matching looks of disappointment.

“It was a hard choice for us, to share this with the people in our lives.  To embarrass ourselves like that.  And now you go and do this…”

“I didn’t ask you to share this with anyone,” he mutters, resign coming out more fully now, and Daisy tenses further, clenching a fist at her side and squeezing hard to channel the tension.

It almost works, she thinks – except that when his mother opens her mouth again, the anticipation of whatever crap she’s about to let loose sparks all her contained frustrations to explode.

“Did you two fly all the way out here to berate him? Because I’m pretty sure berating works just as well over the phone,” she says, probably louder than fully necessary – except that she knows that if she wants them to not ignore her, obnoxious is her only choice. She pulses her fist at her side, awarding the duo with an exaggerated, tight smile when they stare at her in shock.

They look almost as horrified as the imaginary versions of them did when she imaginary-told them about the couch, which does wonders to settle her pulse.  Lincoln makes a faint noise of protest beside her, but she pretends she doesn’t hear it.

“There is no reason for you to be a part of this discussion,” his father says when he seems to finally regain control of his lax jaw, brow furrowing in the same way Lincoln’s does when he is frustrated. “This is within my family.”

She actually laughs out loud at that, a sharp, sarcastic noise that makes his mother jump slightly.  She shifts so she is sitting upright, squaring her shoulders as she leans in closer to his parents, raising an eyebrow.

“I am more his family than you two  _ ever _ will be,” she says slowly, contained anger poisoning the words behind her unfading smile. 

Disgust shades his father’s eyes, but it isn’t a look she is by any means unfamiliar with.

“You’re an orphan, what the hell do you think you know about family?”

She snaps, pulling sharply to her feet and pulsing her fists white knuckled at her sides as she channels every ounce of her energy into storming  _ past _ the couch, vision tunneling on the front door and her escape.

Her stiff fingers are wrapping around the cool handle when a heated voice that doesn’t belong to either of his parents reaches her ears.

“… I don’t give a shit what sort of entitlement you think you have.  You don’t get to talk to her like that. She is off-limits. Don’t test me.”

There is an edge to his voice she’s never heard before, and she pauses – fingers gently squeezing against the icy door handle as her pulse continues to pound in her ears.

“It is no wonder the wedding was cancelled, with your maturity still what it is. I can’t imagine your fiancée took well to your behavior, or to your… situation.  Situa _ tions _ .”

She contains another angry spurt of breath, not wanting to risk missing Lincoln’s response.

“You’re going to need to be more specific about what we’re referring to,” he says, more tamely but voice still edged with unfamiliar impatience. “Most of my life is a situation, if I’ve understood correctly.”

She stares at the grain of the door, anger still pulsing through her – but suddenly very interested in Lincoln’s change of tempo.

“Why don’t we start with the living situation, hm?” His father responds heatedly, clearly not taking well to the new retaliations from his usually fightless punching bag. “You certainly make enough money to stop splitting the bill with a roommate.  Why would you choose to keep living with this terrible influence? You practically beg the world to get the wrong idea about the two of you.”

This time, it’s Lincoln who lets out a dry chuckle, and she hears his chair creak abruptly.

“What wrong idea, dad? That we’re  _ involved _ ?” He annunciates the word pointedly, sarcastically, in a way that somehow makes it sound filthier than if he’d just flat out said ‘ _ fucking _ ,’ and she can’t help but let a tiny grin pull proudly at her lips.

Jemma had made it clear again and again before making herself sparse that the last thing they could possibly afford was to let their parents find out about the new… relationship status.  She hadn’t left until they assured her that they didn’t think accidentally making out in front of them was going to be an issue.

But suddenly, Daisy thinks, playing the angry rise of his defensive voice again and again in her head – the concern seems much less ridiculous.

“ _ Why _ , Lincoln?” His father persists, voice on the verge of cracking the walls with its ferocity.

Silence stretches a beat longer than she expects, and she draws her eyes from the uneven grain of the door to glance back over the scene, searching out a reason for the hesitation. His light, troubled, eyes are already gently settled on her, and a faint smile flashes fleetingly across his lips when their gazes mingle.

“Because I love her.”

He looks at her when he says it, and she furrows her brow just barely – holding his eyes and wondering loosely.

It is a long, terse moment before his parents speak again and his eyes cling to hers rather than hold them, and she senses the lifeline between them, senses the scissors he has finally taken to the rope between him and his parents that has been fraying since he was born without a set of ticking numbers on his wrist.

She can’t for the life of her imagine why the silence, why the denial from his parents that she is sure he expected – seems to crack at his exterior.

But what does she know about family.

“I want to have dinner with you,” his father finally says with a dangerous calm, each word ending on a beat that pauses a moment longer than it should. “Tonight, without  _ her _ there.”

He doesn’t look at Daisy, doesn’t gesture to her, but it is clear she is the spat  _ her _ in question.

“No.”

His voice is softer than it has been, less forceful – but still steady.  Still firm.

Even Daisy doesn’t feel capable of cutting through the heavy thickness of the silence that follows the response. The refusal.

She has seen Lincoln stand up to people plenty, seen the fierce edge, the angry red his ears burn.  But not his parents –  _ never _ his parents.

She stays silent, playing her fingers at the handle again slowly – debating her next move.

As the silence stretches, she swallows and turns the handle – letting the echoing creak break through the air for them and slipping out.  Letting him have his space.

She finds Jemma in the lobby bathroom, pacing back and forth across the grimy, broken tiles and wringing her hands till her fingertips burn red.

She doesn’t think she’ll lie to her – she is just fairly sure she doesn’t need to know the full  _ truth _ .

“Are they here?” Her friend asks nervously when she catches sight of Daisy watching her in a mirror, turning quickly to face her with widening eyes. “Was Lincoln ready? How did they seem?”

“Relax,” Daisy says through a soft chuckle.  “Take a breath.  They’re here.  It’ll be fine.”

_ It can’t get any worse. _

Jemma lets out a low breath, and when she stops wringing her hands – Daisy can’t miss how her fingers quiver.

She takes a step forward, reaching out to take both of her friends cool hands in her own, giving a comforting squeeze as she searches out her eyes.

“It’s alright,” she reiterates. “It isn’t your fault.  I’m not mad.”

Jemma looks away from her a moment, shaking her head slowly as she swallows.

“I…” a pause, and Daisy can see the wheels turning as she searches out her words carefully. “It’s not that.”

Daisy’s brow furrows as she watches her friend, waiting for her to go on.

“Okay,” she concedes, still speaking slowly. “It’s  _ kind of _ that.”

When she pauses again, Daisy’s concern and curiosity is too much to retain.

“What’s  _ wrong _ , Jemma?”

She squeezes her eyes shut as she takes a big, deep breath.

“We - Fitz and Maggie and I - we’re moving, Daisy.”

Suddenly, being up in her apartment somewhere in the middle of the icy argument between Lincoln and his parents doesn’t seem so bad.

She tries to nod and shrug simultaneously, thinking the movement probably translates more along the lines of an uncomfortable spasm.

“What, uptown?” She prompts, thinking about the nice school Fitz has talked about offhandedly a few times, thinking about Maggie growing older and getting closer to attending it.

Jemma shakes her head again, slower, not opening her eyes.

“A… a bit further.”

Daisy clenches her teeth.

“What, next town? Next state? You’re going to need to be a little more specific than  _ a bit further _ .”

She doesn’t like the heavy emptiness that rushes to fill the silence as soon as her words echo out.

“ _ Jemma _ !”

“Back to England,” she whispers, words lining together into one exhale of breath. When Daisy doesn’t answer, she hesitantly continues. “Mum and dad are selling their house here and moving back full time.  Dad… he is getting near to retiring and he’s offered me a position.  Fitz and I have been… discussing it.  Then we were looking at homes, and we’ve brought Maggie over a few times and we just – we don’t think waiting would be best for her.”

Daisy eventually finds the power to swallow, tearing her eyes from Jemma’s closed eyelids to stare at the tiles beneath her feet. A few little details she didn’t even know belonged together suddenly connect in her head.

She isn’t sure she remembers how to speak.

“We were going to wait to tell you till after the wedding. We didn’t want to make anything… worse.”

She swallows again, fighting to rid her throat of the gagging lump, searching for something to say, something to break the silence.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

It is Jemma’s family, Jemma’s life – and it stings. No… no it  _ aches _ . But it isn’t her place to raise a finger to try to stop her.

“Daisy, I didn’t realize.  I didn’t think till now that we’re leaving him.  We’re leaving him here, alone, all over again.”

She doesn’t think it is  _ just Lincoln _ she is referring to leaving alone.

It isn’t  _ just Lincoln _ she’s felt responsible for her entire life.

She is still holding her friend’s hands tensely, fingertips numb and white – but she doesn’t let go.

“Jemma, stop.” She says softly. “Please,  _ please _ stop worrying. He’s an adult. He’ll understand and he’ll be fine. And I…”

Another pause, and she tears her gaze from the tiles to meet her friend’s concerned eyes again, finding the familiar ebb of safety. She offers her a tiny smile.

“I’ve got a lot more than a pencil protecting me these days, Jem.”

She catches the gleam of a tear edging Jemma’s eye, but she drops her hands before it falls free – grabbing her into a hug, the force of which nearly knocks the air out of her.  She hugs her back, tight – pressing her chin to her shoulder and resenting the sadness she sees in her reflection.

It isn’t about her, and it isn’t even about Lincoln.

She still doesn’t want to let go.

“If you ask me not to go, I probably won’t,” Jemma tells her after a moment, just beneath her breath – and Daisy feels a teary laugh rise up her throat.

“I know,” she tells her, forcing her arms to untangle from her friend so that she can take a step back and find her eyes again, “that’s why I’m not asking.”

3/7/17, 1:02 PM

The landlord stops her on her way to the elevator with an armful of paperwork she finally feels un-fogged enough to  _ begin _ to catch up on.

“Miss Johnson,” he greets with a smile and a nod that seem to formal, that ask her to stop for a chat even though her arms are full to the elbows.

She smiles back, probably not quite as friendly, preparing to dodge him as she nears his odd placement in the hall near the elevator.  Like he’s been waiting.

“Do you need a hand with those?”

She does.

“Nope, I’ve got them,” she assures him with another of her dry smiles which she thinks probably definitely need practice, “thanks though!”

She punches the up button in a series of trial-and-error hip-bumps against the wall as he watches quietly.

When the elevator opens, he hesitates a moment before following her in – immediately turning her from vaguely to fully on-guard as the doors slide shut.  She clenches her papers tighter in her arms.

“Miss Johnson, we need to talk.  You and I and Mr. Campbell,” he pauses again, reaching a sausage-y finger to scratch a sweaty bald head.

Her eyes narrow as her mind frantically tries to recall if they made rent on time the month prior.  Except Lincoln takes care of rent – and she can’t imagine Lincoln screwing it up.

The elevator rings as the doors reopen, and she still hasn’t responded to the sweaty little man.

“Um… right.  Can you call or something? We’re still healing from the last unannounced visitors.”

His brow furrows in confusion at her halfhearted attempt at a joke that he never could have gotten in the first place – and she sighs as she slips from the elevator, arms going tingly from the weight of the papers.

“Actually,” he says, bustling to follow her into the hall, “Let’s clear this whole mess up now, why don’t we. The two of you – you are roommates, correct? Nothing more?”

She thinks she must be staring at him like he has two heads as a result of the absurdity of the question, because he rushes to continue.

“There were complaints of a young couple – resembling in appearance the two of you – being rather immodest.”

 

She still can’t shake the absurdity of the inquiry, eyes narrowed on the little man as she manages half a shrug.

“It was probably us.  We were a little drun—“ she pauses, not wanting to make herself appear any more irresponsible than she must already seem.  “A little tired,” she amends. “It won’t happen again. I’m sorry if we… disturbed anyone.”

She thinks the conversation is over, turning away and still debating the turning over the complete oddness of the questioning in her mind when he mutters something further.

“Oh dear.”

She isn’t a fan of vague passive points, and she whirls around scowling this time.

“Will you please tell me what the actual issue here is, because you’re wasting my time.’

He swallows silently, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes drift to her unmarked wrist.

She doesn’t need him to tell her, doesn’t need the words to affirm the lingering stares and questioning glances – but she likes how it makes the Marked squirm, when she makes them put their groundless concerns into the air between them.

It gives her the teeniest straw of power to grasp at – and she clings tight with both hands.

“Miss Johnson, you know what the policy is.  It has always made the other residents uncomfortable, just having the two of you here, having you living together even as just roommates.  It would be the least hassle – I’m sorry, I really am – to ask the two of you to find new accommodations.”

She is too worn to argue, too exhausted – already hearing every undebatable rebuttal he’ll shoot back at her skipping tiredly in her mind.

She smiles dryly instead, shifting the stacks of papers again in her protesting, aching arms.

“Can’t wait to tell Lincoln the great news,” she mutters with cheery sarcasm, not waiting for his response as she turns back down the hallway.  Away.

She tries not to hesitate at the door.

3/11/17, 10:30 PM

It is supposed to be a movie night and only a movie night – after a mutual agreement that they want to still be able to maintain their favorite best-friend activities, regardless of just how enjoyable they both find the newest activity added to the table.

(She is kissing him between sarcastic comments about the hotness of her favorite characters and the cheesiness of the lines she knows by heart anyway, starting on opposite ends of the couch and scooting all the way to his warm side.)

(It is so easy to be with him.)

“Daisy,” he smiles against her lips in a way she is quickly learning she loves – fingers digging into her side, tangling into her shirt despite the protest in his tone. “We agreed we were going to do exactly _ not this _ .”

She draws back, grinning at the lightness in his eyes.

“Yeah, but we’ve done things that way for like ten years. I’m making it  _ better _ .”

She kisses him softly one more time before curling up against his side, pressing her ear to his heartbeat as his arm loops loosely around her, holding her close.

They haven’t discussed Daisy’s conversation with the landlord beyond her passing on the information and watching his ears go angrily red. It wasn’t worth it – there was no fight to be put up. 

She doesn’t want to ruin the softness of the moment.

“Have you looked at any listings?”

He tenses slightly, and she swallows as his heartbeat stutters.  She wants to apologize, wants to take it back – but she bites her tongue.

The movie plays on in silence a moment before he answers.

“It isn’t going to be easy. Especially to find a place together.”

“We can tell them we’re just roommates.  It worked out fine the first time,” she motions vaguely at their apartment around them as proof.

“We worked our asses off to find this place, Daisy – I’m sure you haven’t forgotten.  And weren’t even  _ lying _ about being roommates, then.”

His voice has taken on an odd, slightly impatient edge – and it sparks frustration within her.

“Lincoln,” she snaps, “we’ve spent our entire lives only taking steps backwards.  I’m not giving this up.  We’re finally, finally moving forward and we’re doing it together.  No.  I’m not doing the reverse thing again. We’ll find somewhere, and we’ll find it together.”

She thinks her words might be more than a little effected by the distance that will soon be between her and Jemma, but she can’t find it in herself to care.

She is a little surprised when a ghost of a smile whispers across his lips – gone as quickly as she thinks she sees it.

She continues, encouraged by the unexpected reaction.

“I should be getting a raise soon, and between the two of us we should be able to find something that works, Lincoln. Money was more of an issue when we were in school.  But now…”

He drifts nearer to her, pressing a slow kiss to her forehead before drawing back, eyes flitting carefully onto hers – edged with a hesitance that makes her nervous.

Finally he speaks.

“I got accepted back into med school.”

She sits up sharply, feeling her eyes go wide.

“Oh my god, Lincoln! Why didn’t you tell me!? This is amazing news!”

His smile is dry even though she can tell her reaction has flattered him.

“That’d probably be because I found out around… ten minutes? Before I also found out we were getting kicked out,” he pauses, shaking his head lightly. “I can’t go, not now.  The timing is wrong.”

She feels her brow tense, and she shoves his shoulder on impulse – probably a little harder than she intends.

“Ow! Daisy, what the hell!?”

“No, you’re  _ not _ doing this again. You aren’t  _ excusing _ your way out of it.  We both know how much you need this.  You’re going.  We’ll figure everything else out.”

“Daisy…”

She prods his shoulder again, careful to be gentler this time around.

“No, Lincoln.  No excuses.  I can’t believe you waited two whole days to tell me this, asshole.”

She finds where his hand fell to the couch when she jerked away from him, tangling her fingers gently through his and squeezing.

“It’ll definitely never happen again,” he says, sarcastic but teasing as he brings his free hand to rub gingerly at his assaulted shoulder.

(There is a happy medium, she finds – cuddled against his chest listening more to how his soft laughter echoes and vibrates beneath his ribs than to the movie.)

3/13/17, 1:21 AM

“Lincoln,” she breathes through the darkness, chin pressed up against his shoulder.  She knows he is awake by his breathing, by how his muscles haven’t quite relaxed just yet.

He sighs softly.

“Mhm?”

His vocal chords catch, groggy and rough – and she glides her fingers over his chest beneath the sheets, feeling how her touch affects the way his body shifts.

She is still relearning him, still adding to the picture.

She  _ loves _ it.

“Your sister knows we are financially responsible adult people, doesn’t she?”

He lets out a tired grumble that vibrates beneath her fingers.

“Lincoln,” she urges, mind spinning around the still-blooming idea. “I’m serious,  _ listen _ – we could work out an unconventional payment deal with your sister.  We can buy  _ her _ house.”

He shifts at that, turning stiffly beneath her arm to face her, bed creaking in protest.  She can only catch a gleam of moonlight off of his squinting eyes, but she watches them anyway.

“Would you want that?” He asks carefully, voice still gravelly, but far more apt.

She hasn’t thought about that exactly – not really. 

They’re moving quickly, and intuition tells her it should make her nervous, that she should want to slow down.  She doesn’t exactly have a history of being sure of  _ anything _ .

Except she isn’t concerned about  _ this _ .

She smiles even though she feels confident he can’t see the reaction.

“Yeah.”

(She graduated from the home when she graduated high school with a halfhearted point from the guidance counselor in the direction of a major in computer sciences.

_ “A lot of students are surprised to learn that they can use their… not quite legal… talents in a college setting.  Instead of hacking the grade system for your A’s, you can start earning them because of your hacking.” _

She got into three schools in places across the country with barely enough cash in her bank account for transportation to a single one.  She followed Jemma in the end, because Jemma was following her brother and because she hadn’t even decided if she was going to stick out college – so the choice of which she attended didn’t seem fundamental.

She and Jemma were roommates, or at least planned to be – till her parents  _ surprised _ their daughter with an (emphasis on private) room, leaving Daisy with no dorm and less than a week to find someone willing to give up a single to share with someone like her.

It was Lincoln who stepped in.

_ “You can stay with me until something else comes up,” _ he’d told her as if it was no big deal, even though she’d personally experienced the tininess of his living quarters – voice sounding distant through the amassed frustration pounding against her skull.   _ “It’ll be alright.  We’ll figure it out.” _

They became “we” that day and they were “ _ Daisy and Lincoln _ ” or “ _ Lincoln and Daisy _ ” every day after.  She found a job and they moved into their current home – a slightly larger, barely nicer apartment, which was more central between the two schools. 

They barely scraped by, but they barely scraped by together.)

His features are becoming clearer through the darkness, clear enough that she can make out the gentle curve of his lips as he ducks close to her, kissing her slowly and fully.

“Let’s talk to her tomorrow.”

3/20/17, 7:37 PM

The piles of unfolded boxes have accumulated in front of the couch, and she hasn’t been sure where the remote is in a solid week – but tomorrow is their last day in the building and still, neither of them has found it in themselves to life a single finger to begin to pack their life away into the layers of cardboard.

So when she comes home from work to an empty kitchen, and the walls of the living room stripped bare of the crooked frames it has accumulated through the years, she can’t begin to imagine what had finally inspired Lincoln to begin the work.  Boxes are piled high, so high she can’t see straight to the other end of the room without shifting around a little.  She doesn’t see him.

She lets the door fall shut behind her.

“Daisy?” His voice echoes from somewhere deep within the jungle of boxes, maybe even behind a door. “Be careful, the second pile on the left is the glass pile.”

“Dammit,” she answers, dropping her bag (wondering if she’ll ever  _ find it _ again) as she slips around a pile and then the couch, in the direction his voice came from. “The second pile on the left is the exact one I decided to climb.  All the shattering noises suddenly make sense.”

The door to his room is ajar and she presses through, scanning his carefully made bed behind a few less layers of boxes. 

He is stood at his desk which is almost comically half-emptied – stacks of books piled higher than she can reach on one end drastically contrasting the bare surface of the other.  His shoulders are just barely slumped, head bowed to study something he is holding.

Her heart thuds as she steps quietly up beside him, peering around his shoulder at the little framed picture in his hands.

She and Jemma smirk back up at her, printed in stolen ink and crumpled at the edges from being shoved deep into her pocket as she made her daring escape.

She doesn’t know why she is surprised, again, that he still has the photograph.

He doesn’t speak and she presses her cheek up against the hard muscles of his arm, settling against him as he holds on to the moment.  Making a new moment of her own.

She lets her eyes wander – over the chip in the edge of the desk that was the unfortunate result of extreme drunkenness and a heavy hand and a loud argument she didn’t even remember the cause of the next day; over the corner of a folded curtain that Jemma  _ completely _ tricked them into shopping for with a lie about free lunch; the stained coffee cup on his bookcase that they both persistently, stubbornly refused to claim and consequently refused to clean up.  There is a Captain America poster on one of his walls that she put there because of her compulsive poster problem and a severe lack of remaining space in her own room – which he’d given her trouble about for weeks before finally admitting that he liked it.  There is a faded red dog collar stacked on top of the books that still makes her feel cold and hollow with the regret of talking him into giving the gangly stray to an old college friend – worried the dog would be all the additional motivation their landlord would need to send them packing.

When they’d moved into the apartment, it had been with blank things. Empty canvasses – desperate for new beginnings.

But moving out, now, moving  _ forward _ – she doesn’t want a single worn memory to be left out of the boxes.

They have made all of them  _ together _ .

She reaches up to run her fingers lightly down his arm beneath her chin.

“What are you thinking about?” She asks quietly, gently circling her fingers against his warm cotton sleeve. Flicking her gaze off of the room to his distant light eyes.

He doesn’t answer at first, lost to her wherever his whirring mind has taken him off to.

“It… feels weird,” he responds, voice soft and pliable.  “Starting over again.”  He shrugs softly, eyes finally falling to her instead of the photo of her. “I never really mastered the whole constant change thing.”

She studies his expression quietly a moment, searchingly – lifting just away from his side so she can stare more fully up at him, scanning his features carefully.

“We’re not starting over again,” she finally answers carefully, eyes drifting to the stacks of books all around them – soft smile finding her lips. “We’re just… starting a new chapter.”

She pulls away from him fully, then – reaching around him for his laptop still perched neatly on the desk and flipping it open – tapping in the password she  _ technically _ doesn’t know and watching the screen buzz to life.

“What are you doing?” he prods, and she grins but doesn’t look away from the screen as she locates the application she is looking for – tapping another series of letters, bumping up the volume, and hitting play.

Elvis echoes from the speakers, cheerfully melancholy – sending a rush of nostalgia through her veins as her eyes take in the boxes surrounding them.

But Lincoln is smiling widely down at her, even if sadness is still present in the shadows in his eyes.

“I  _ really _ hope you didn’t pack all the pots, because mac n cheese with star noodles is the only dinner option I will accept. I will  _ literally _ sooner starve than eat anything besides mac n cheese with star noodles.”

He is still smiling silently at her when he turns, drifting forward into her space and looping his fingers loosely and lazily around her wrists.  He thumbs at her palm, sending sparks racing through her veins – as he ducks down to her, kissing her slowly and deliberately for a long moment before pulling just barely away – smile growing as the song softens to a close, shifting to something with a much stronger beat.

She twists her wrists in his hands till she can slide her fingers through his – squeezing and giving him a sharp little tug nearer to her, so the space between their bodies is nearly nonexistent.  He doesn’t question the movement, taking advantage of it instead, to press another brushing kiss across her lips.

“Dance with me,” she whispers, even though they are the only people in the room – in the apartment, even.  His eyes sparkle, and she can’t help but grin up at him.

He slips his hand up against her waist and follows her off-tempo lead through two songs – sinking his forehead against hers and continuing to sway with her when the tune switches again to something less energetic, more crooning.

“We’re lucky, you know,” she tells him after a while – holding him close and staring right up into his affectionate eyes.

“I know,” he answers, breathing in slowly as his eyes search hers. “I know.”

She remembers, distinctly – a night long ago when she thought her world was ending.  Remembers a cold spot on a curb and the warm burn of the sunshine reflected off the car he drove.  She remembers how aware she was, that night in front of the home, sobbing against his chest – of the press of his fingers into her arm. Of his warmth. Of the safety she felt in his arms.

She remembers asking a boy with shadows in his light eyes if she could stay with him, just for a while longer.

(They dance terribly, together and separate, and on the floor and on the bed until their feet hurt – and they keep packing, eating mac n cheese from the pot with dueling spoons – until night is heavy and Daisy thinks her exhaustion might steal the control of her limbs, might fill her with lead and force her to the floor.  Accidentally on purpose only one bed is left intact – accidentally on purpose curling up against each other beneath the sheets, too tired to do anything but hold each other.

Elvis is still crooning from his laptop, but Daisy isn’t even sure she remembers the correct rhythm of her breathing – much less how to use her legs.

“Do you think it’ll ever be home?” she asks him after a while of mingled breathing and loud thoughts humming harmonies with the strumming guitar.

His forehead nuzzles down to hers, soft and warm and steady – and she smiles tiredly at the sensation of comfort.

“We’ll be together, won’t we?”)


End file.
